Steve White.net

So I Amy and I went shopping at Gaisano a few days ago (the local equivalent of Walmart, basically). We had to buy plastic coat hangers for the laundry. When we found them there were bundles of two different kinds — really crappy square-shaped ones, and much nicer rounded smooth ones. Both were made out of the same kind of plastic, with the same color selection.

I immediately grabbed the nice rounded ones while Amy grabbed the square crappy ones. Hers had many sharp edges that would snag on your clothes, mine didn’t.

So of course I asked why she grabbed the square ones. “Oh, this bundle has more than the rounded bundle.” I counted and they both were bundles of 12, exactly the same. “Yeah, but those are more expensive.” I check the price tag and they were both exactly 36 pesos (roughly $0.80 USD) per bundle.

It’s important to note that I could have been wrong on both accounts — mine could have been more expensive on a cost/unit basis.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Americans will always immediately try to find the better quality stuff, while Filipinos will always immediately try to find the least expensive option. We both have our blinders on, but we’re seeing completely different things.

I know I haven’t saved the world or anything, I’m just sayin’.

As a foreigner in paradise, everyone here tries to charge you more for stuff, because they think you are rich and you won’t notice the difference. We’re not talking about much, just five or ten cents (US) for small things you would buy around town, such as a newspaper, a loaf of bread, etc.

When Amy and I go shopping at the big market in town I always stay 20 feet away from her so the shop owners don’t jack up the price on everything. Nothing in the market has an actual price displayed, they simply invent a price based on how well the shopper is dressed, and how much they think they can get away with, and whether or not the shopper has a foreigner husband in tow.

On the bright side, everyone thinks that, as a foreigner, you must be really busy with important foreigner-related things like corporate takeovers and debenture bonds and such.

For example, I went into the local courier office (sorta like FedEx) the other day. There were lots of people there and you had to take a number to be served by one of the two clerks on duty. I drew number 19, and moments later the first clerk called out, “Serving number two please.” This was going to take a while.

Each customer had multiple forms to fill out, options to choose, packaging to do, etc., and the service was unbearably slow. The hot, stuffy room was awash in sweat dripping from every forehead. On the other side of the room a naked, filthy baby wailed for its mother. But my business there was important so I had to wait it out.

Then suddenly, in front of a whole room full of waiting people, the second clerk finished with her customer, looked me straight in the eye from across the room, and shouted, “How about you sir, what can I do for you?”

Because I was the only foreigner in there, everyone in the whole building had seen me go up and pick a number like everyone else. And they knew the next number to be called was three. And they knew that the clerk was cutting me to the front of the line. To try and be a little bit fair I pointed at my own chest and pantomimed, “Who me?” in response. With no shame at all the clerk just said, “Yes sir, please step over to the desk.”

You can almost think of the whole country as a giant pay-for-service model business, whereby you pay extra for your newspaper, but you don’t have to wait on the line to pay. That’s a perfect microcosm of what it is like to stay in the Philippines my friends, and that’s why I don’t sweat the small stuff.

I swear the Philippines is home to some of the smartest mosquitoes in the world. They bite, I take counter measures, then they bite somewhere else. It has now escalated into an all-out war between the pests and myself.

For example, there’s a booth in the dining room where I sit every day to check my e-mail and read the daily newspapers. The ’skeeters figured this out, and then proceeded to bite my feet for weeks. Because I’m sitting at the table concentrating on something else, I don’t notice until it’s too late. At first I tried some OFF! repellent, but I was always forgetting to use it until after I got attacked. Next I switched to wearing socks. That worked good for a few days but the desparate pests eventually just started biting higher up.

The other day I put a fan under the table that blows air across my legs to prevent the mosquitoes from landing. That worked terrific! Yay!

But when I’m typing on my computer my elbows hang over the edge of the table. So now the mosquitoes have switched to flying up my shirt sleeves and biting my arms. They are definitely adapting to the situation like some futuristic cyborg bugs.

I’m investigating nuclear options now, I’ll keep you posted.

Yeah, I dunno what to say. As a cultural anthropologist*, I’d really like to go into more detail about the whole death / funeral / burial practices here, but anything I say might come out sounding disrespectful to the wonderful people of the Philippines. The things involved are mind-boggling to an American who is used to a nice, clean, sanitary, pre-packaged, McFuneral.

Part of the problem is simply Roman Catholic tradition in these parts, as portrayed by a nine-day novena that involves having the body laying around for nine days in very high temperatures. I suspect this goes back to a time when medical care involved sticks and stones, and having a pronouncement of death from a qualified doctor was basically impossible. So if Grandma wakes up after four days of the novena, you convert your funeral to a party and everyone who came to the island via kayak for the funeral can celebrate.

In the other corner is the temperature danger zone, followed as gospel by professional chefs everywhere. If you calculate almost any reasonable tempurature over this much time, it’s bound to be bad. And as you might know already, the temperature here is far from reasonable.

So what to do? My choice: cremation immediately after I die. If anyone cares enough to hold a novena they can have that with an urn full of my ashes and a big Photoshopped picture of me sleeping peacefully or something. Follow that with sprinkling my ashes at sea, and anyone in the world can visit my grave simply by swimming in the Pacific ocean. I’m on the record, folks!

*(Just kidding about that part.)

There’s an episode of M*A*S*H (season 9, episode Z402) in which there’s a big heat wave and Margaret Houlihan develops a case of prickly heat on her hiney. Margaret keeps running (well, sort of hobbling) over to Colonel Potter to beg for a particular medication that the camp is out of.

As you might have guessed, my butt hurts, and I suspect it’s prickly heat, mostly due to the hot temperatures and excess sweating that goes on here. Rather than going to the local doctor and showing him my fanny, I was trying to remember what the name of the medication was that Margaret wanted — it was camphor. I went to the local pharmacy to buy some but they said they didn’t have it. I looked through the bottles on the shelves myself (just to make sure) and of course it was there. It’s a green oil in a glass bottle, in case you are looking for some.

Camphor oil stings a bit when you first put it on but after a bit it cools off and it is very relieving. I highly recommend it, and it’s only 37 pesos per bottle.

My good friend Skip Ellsworth died on August 6th. We were friends, business partners and, more recently brothers-in-law. Skip was married to Belle, and I married her sister Amy.

The funeral practices in the Philippines are very unusual, at least compared to the way we are used to doing it in the states. All in the same day the body was embalmed, dressed, put into a coffin and delivered by the funeral home back to Skip’s resort. There the body lies in wait for approximately 9 days for a prayer ritual. After that will be the “official” funeral and then burial.

During the nine day prayer ritual, the family avoids cooking fried foods, sweeping the floor, combing their hair, and a few other things that I don’t understand. There are certain members of the family who aren’t even supposed to take showers. All of this is in 90-100f degree weather. In addition, this is the time when friends and family come to visit, drink coffee and play board games like chess. Oh, by the way, this is a 24-hour-per-day routine — according to tradition someone must be awake around the clock to look after the body until the burial.

Anyway, Skip will be missed by everyone who knew him.  I believe the vigil will be going until at least August 14th if you would like to stop by for coffee and chess. (I told you it was unusual).

Collectively, I’ve spent at least a couple of years in the Philippines now, and I still forget to bring things I might need with me. There are lots of ordinary, every day things that you simply can’t buy here. Things that you would take for granted in the States. So here’s my attempt at a list. I’ll update it as I think of more things (feel free to add your own items via comment below).

1. Really good sunblock (I recommend No-Ad brand). If you can’t find No-Ad then buy whatever jumbo bottle of SPF 45 you can find at Costco. You can buy sunblock here, but the locals don’t bother with it; since it’s a “tourist-only” product you have to pay outrageous prices.
2. Same goes for burn relief (which you will probably need, even if you bring the sunblock). Pick up a jumbo bottle of Hawaiian Tropic Cool Aloe ICE Burn Relief Gel with Lidocaine. They sell the exact same thing here (for $20 USD) except WITHOUT the Lidocaine. So basically it’s pretty useless. I think all the “whatever-dash-caine” medications are illegal here — see #3 also.
3. A jumbo tube or three of Lanacane or something similar. When you get a bug bite (from, for instance, a mosquito) it swells up and gets red and itchy. Here they have plenty of biting insects but no product that I can find to relieve bite itches. I did find one product that claims to relieve itching but it had two problems — a) it came in a tube smaller than my pinky and cost $10 USD and b) it did absolutely nothing to relieve even the tiniest of insect bites. As I recall, Lanacane has benzocaine which really soothes itches.
4. Ambien and any other medication that actually works (are you sensing a theme here?). Other meds that are hard to get here would include any pain killer stronger than Tylenol (forget buying opioids, muscle relaxants, etc here). Bring them with you.
5. One thing you will NOT need is any form of antibiotics. All manner of ABs are sold over the counter here with no prescription needed.
6. Razors and shaving cream. They sell them here, but they just aren’t as good as what you get in the states, even if you buy the same brand name. Gillette Foamy cream is a pale ghost of it’s American cousin. Same with Mach3 blades.
7. Pocketknives. Yes, they have them here, but they are kinda rare. In the Philippines it’s illegal to carry a knife unless it’s for your job. So pack an extra Leatherman to have handy when you need it.
8. RainX windshield washer additive (or the original RainX). Here it rains a lot during certain times of year, and having RainX makes a big difference. NOTE: I’ve discovered that the RainX additive breaks down and fails if I leave my car here in the heat for too long. I left a bottle in my car’s trunk a few months ago and now when I add it to the washer fluid it does nothing at all. Bring a new bottle each trip. [Edit 29.Jul.08] I found original RainX at Ace Hardware in the SM Mall in Cebu City.
9. An iPod adapter for your car, assuming you have an iPod and buy a car here. The FM-transmitting adapters are utterly worthless, buy a wired FM Modulator instead. The stereo installation shops here can figure it out just fine (mine cost $12 USD to have professionally installed, and they did a good job). If you are wondering, I had the work done at CFG in Basement 2 underneath Ayala mall in Cebu City. I don’t think they have wired FM modulators for sale here, for some reason.
10. If you need condoms, buy them in the US. The ones they have here just won’t fit. ‘Nuff said.
11. If you eat beef, bring a few bags of beef jerky with you. Beef is kind of rare here (unless you are staying at posh hotels in the city all the time). A few small bags of jerky might help ease the craving. If you are going to be here a while, you have to switch to pork, chicken and fish.
12. Prenatal vitamins. You know, just in case. It’s another thing I don’t think they sell here, but even if they did I would stick with the US products for safety’s sake.

More later, if I can think of anything else.

Out here in the province people use dynamite for fishing (it’s easier than traditional methods and yields more fish). It’s illegal but it happens all the time. It’s bad for the ocean and it destroys living reefs.

Yesterday it also destroyed a local Daanbantayan family. A father and son were fishing with dynamite just a few hundred feet from where I was sitting, and a blast went off above the water, making it much louder than normal. Everyone in the village immediately knew that there was a problem and came running. The son was screaming “Agay!” (loose translation: “Ouch!”) and calling for help. The accidental discharge killed the father and took one of the son’s eyes.

It turns out that Amy and I are friends with other members of that family. The day before the accident we bought an ice cream shake for a younger daughter of the man that was killed. It was her birthday and I think she just turned 16.

It’s hard to be judgmental about the blast fishing that goes on here because for the most part, the fishermen are just doing what they need to do to feed their families. At least once a year someone is killed by their own dynamite, so the fishermen know the risks involved. If they had an alternative I’m pretty sure they would take it.

I’m out in the province now, and two weeks after typhoon Fengshen made a direct hit here on the north end of Cebu, not much is different. The electricity, telephone, wireless phone, and internet services are all going. A few trees came down but they’ve been cleaned up since the storm.

I made it to my house for the first time today and there was a big mess but no real damage. Just a bunch of branches, leaves, driftwood, coconut husks, etc cluttering up the yard. Fortunately we have plenty of ocean nearby (the house is beachfront) so it makes for an easy cleanup.

So I’m back in the RPI and there doesn’t seem to be any typhoon damage here in the city. I’ll report back in a few days from the province (the boondocks).

I recently picked up a cheap, used, first-generation iPhone to bring on my trip. I unlocked it of course so it will work with the local GSM SIM cards. Every time I make a phone call here everyone is flabbergasted by the touch screen. So far I’ve had three semi-legit offers to buy it for the same price I paid, and one very polite offer to steal the phone from me if only I would let the potential thief borrow the phone for a minute. That one I’m pretty sure was real so I declined.

Having never seen a touch screen before, everyone wants to give it a try, flip through my photo album, or type a text. It makes me wish I packed a box of individually-wrapped Clorox Wipes. Ah well, I’ve learned something for next time.